Garrison, Crystal, and introducing Cessily - Today

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Garrison and Crystal meet Cessily's parents and find out a bit more about the girl.



In the normally quiet and sedate neighborhood, the shouting voices stood out considerably. They stood out even more when one of them disappeared with an angry yell. The other two resumed shortly thereafter.

Neighbors tried not to let anybody notice as they peeked over fences and between the slats of their blinds. They studiously ducked their heads when a strange car pulled into the subdivision.

Quick glances surreptitiously followed the rental car directly to the Kincaid resident. Whispers started and ran from house to house, over fences and phone lines like brush fire.

"Suburbia. Great." Garrison muttered as he pulled the rental car up to the white and red trimmed house, noting the perfectly winterized lawn and the carefully maintained flower beds, all ready for the spring. Definitely A-type personalities. Fortunately, those tended to be law and order types, and if necessary, the Canadian was more than ready to misuse his FBI status. He killed the motor and stepped out, adjusting his tie and reaching for his notepad. This was the place. Hopefully Xavier's mutant tracker didn't choose today to throw up its first false positive.

Crystal exited the car, one foot touching the ground before the other; both remained on the street. As tempting as it was to consider hovering above the ground, the young princess didn't feel that it would gain any sort of a positive reaction at the moment. Cessily's parents had enough to deal with right now without having a young woman float up to their door. "We should go inside as quickly as possible, yes?" Crystal said.

"Depends on them." Kane rapped on the door twice, and waited for an answer. The sounds of arguing inside didn't necessarily bode will for that possibility.

Silence descended, then feet shuffled. The door swung inward to reveal a faded woman with red hair. Her smile stretched her face unnaturally and her eyes were blood shot. "Are you them then? Come to take this puddle girl away? You make her tell you where she put our Cessily, you hear?"

A larger man's arms closed around the woman, calming her instantly. "There now, dear. Just let them do their jobs. Then we can see about getting things back to normal around here."

Crystal forced a bit of a smile to her face. The poor girl. As if a mutant's manifestation and new forms of it did not tend to be unsettling and traumatic enough for most mutants, to have family react like this certainly did not help the situation at all, even if it did seem to be a fairly typical sort of reaction from non-mutant parents. "Show me to her, please?" Crystal looked at the man as she spoke, keeping herself from speaking Cessily's name in the hope of preventing the woman from becoming even more upset.

The older man, Mr. Kincaid, nodded as he pulled his wife out of the way. "She's down in the basement. Has herself a little apartment. I wired it myself." He opened a door and flipped on the light. The stark white walls almost blended in to the unfinished wood stairs. "I think she's sort of indisposed at the moment. She didn't like it when we told her about you lot."

"Not sure what you told her, Mr Kincaid, but we're here to help." Kane motioned the father off to one side as Crystal went down the stairs. He needed to get the authorization from the parents to take Cessily anywhere, and that might not happen in front of his daughter. "How much do you know about Xavier's?"

"Jill's convinced that's not our girl. Me, I don't know what to think." Mark Kincaid rubbed the back of his neck with a hand stained in old oil. "I do know your place has a reputation for welcoming kids like that." He looked nervously toward his wife. "She's been in that basement for a long time. My Cess or not, she's better with you."

"It's a school. Mr Kincaid, not a prison. We can do what we can to help her learn how to control her powers, but she'll still need your support to do this. After all, she's still just a teenager."

Mark seemed to close in on himself. With his eyes on his wife, he handed a much folded piece of paper to the Canadian man. "It's a post office box. Jill collects the mail here and I'd never see it." He turned away. In a small, quiet voice he continued, "I've tried to get her to see one of those new-fangled shrinks that deals with parents and mutant children, but she insists that Cess was stolen away by the fairies. I think she's got bigger problems than I first thought, because she believes this nonsense fantasy."

"Your wife is going to need therapy, Mr Kincaid, and likely yourself too, along with your daughter." Kane leaned back against the wall and cross his arms. "I don't know how much of the news you watch, but up in Canada, the mutant registration and training program includes group sessions for families to come to grips with having a mutant child. So your wife's> reaction is a little extreme, but it's not unheard of. We can help provide> assistance in helping Cessily come to terms with her new powers, and for the both of you to come to terms with a mutant daughter. Despite what she might look like or be able to do now, that is still your child, Mr Kincaid. She still needs her parents, now more than ever."

Mark shook his head, one eye on his wife on the other side of the moon. "I tried callin' the guy on my insurance plan. When I tried to explain it to him he said she was better off with the fantasy than thinking her daughter was a-" The words cut off sharply and his face tightened in remembered rage. "Well, he wasn't gonna work."

"Don't worry about the insurance, Mr Kincaid. It's covered with her schooling." Kane grinned at the man. "I know it is hard, and believe me, taken away by elves isn't the weirdest one we've heard. But you're going to find this school is going to do everything for you and your daughter to help come to terms with this. Having a mutant for a daughter is an adjustment, and you know what, you're totally allowed to be freaked right the hell out. But as long as you remember she's still the same girl that she was last month before this happened, we can help."

Hands shoved deep into his back pockets, Mark Kincaid studied the Canadian man. "As long as you promise she'll be all right. I think," he paused with an indecisive eye on his wife, "I think a little distance between them will be good. The girl, she's been through a lot in the last few months."

"You're likely right. Here, these are the papers for enrollment and the various release forms. We'll bring her along with us, and once your wife has a chance to calm down, we'll bring you out to the school to see the facility, answer any questions, and make the final decision whether or not this is the best decision for your family." Kane clasped him on the shoulder. "Now let's see if we can find a way to pour her into the car, eh?"


Crystal makes her way to Cessily's room in the basement to draw the girl out.



The plain, unfinished wood steps opened up into a spare studio-like apartment. While the furnishings were simple, the walls were not. Between life-sized posters of Broadway shows and local theater acts, child-like paintings of fairy-tail animals tried to roar to cartoon life. Some might recognize the Pooka in the angry visage of the black horse. Or the selkie just about to break from his skin on a rocky coast.

Not many would recognize the silvery puddle in the corner of the room.

Crystal stood on the bottom step and surveyed the room. "Cessily." She spoke the name calmly. Whatever the woman upstairs believed, Crystal knew the girl down here in the basement was Cessily Kincaid. "My name is Crystal, Cessily. Please do not be afraid of me."

Cess didn't see that well when she was all a-puddle, her hearing was a mite distorted too. But Cessily was a fairy tale lover to her very heart and the royals of Attilan were as close as one got in the modern world. Excitement lent solidity to her form and she shot into her regular shape with a wide grin on her face. "Princess Crystal Amaquelin of Attilan!" She could barely contain her excitement.

Until she remembered that she was naked. Cessily immediately fell back into a puddle.

Crystal wasn't sure if she'd ever become accustomed to being recognized in unexpected places. In Attilan, of course, but here... well, Attilan wasn't an unheard of little country anymore thanks to Maximus. At least being recognized meant Cessily should know she was a mutant. Crystal stepped off of the last stair but moved forward rather than down, floating closer to Cessily. "Yes, that is who I am," Crystal confirmed. "I am here to help you."

If a puddle could flounce, this one certainly was. It flounced its way across the room and under a Chinese patterned dressing screen. Once out of sight, Cessily painstakingly put herself back together. She checked the mirrors to make sure an eyebrow wasn't crooked or that one breast wasn't bigger than the other. "I'll be right with you, Princess! Uh, My mutation doesn't really prepare me for anything involving clothes."

"You are not alone with this type of mutation," Crystal told the girl. "There are various types of mutations involving altered shapes or sizes which can lend themselves to an inability to be clothed properly at all times without special clothing created for that specific ability."

Cessily pulled a tunic dress over her shoulders. It was the same dress she used after her last fight with her mother. "So I'm not the only one that looks like a Terminator Two stunt double for the bad guy?"

"You are not the only mutant with a physical and visible mutation," Crystal replied. "Before today, had I ever met someone with the ability to turn into a silver puddle? No. Have I ever met mutants who can no longer pass as an ordinary human? Yes, of course. Wings, scales, skin in all colors of the rainbow, permanently altered sizes... there are just a few of the noticeable physical changes that I have seen,"

Cessily pulled her indignation around her like a protective cloak. "It was very sudden, and I wasn't the daughter anymore. I was a stranger banished to the basement, out of sight." Her penchant for the melodramatic flared to life in those few words.

"You are their daughter, even if they are unable to accept that," Crystal said. "Their reaction is quite unfortunate, even if it is not an uncommon one. You do not wish to stay here, hidden away in this basement, do you?"

Red hair, followed by muted silver eyes peeked out from around the dressing screen. Even through the monochrome features, her eyes turned downward with sadness. "What do you mean?"

"Do you wish to stay in this basement, or would you prefer to go outside and interact with people, living life as you did before this aspect of your mutation became apparent?" Crystal asked, looking at the visible part of Cessily.

She stepped completely out from behind the screen. "I do want out," she said softly. "But my parents-" She bit her lip as she abruptly stopped talking. "How did you get down here, any how? They don't let me have visitors."

"There is a school for mutants in New York, and your parents wish for you to be there," Crystal explained. "You can attend classes, meet new people, and you will not be required to stay on-campus all of the time; there is a weekly trip into the city itself, and students can also leave campus at other times during the week as well."

Cessily's eyes widened in surprise. "They actually called you? But..." She trailed off, looked away. "They want to get rid of me." Her eyes flicked back to Crystal. "Fine, they want me gone, I'll go."

Crystal knew the way she'd told Cessily about her parents "wanting" her to be at the school was an extremely nice version of the truth, but she hadn't seen any need to say it in an unpleasant way. Everyone in this house knew what was going on here; there was no need to make anything worse than it already was.

"Cessily, perhaps it would be better if you looked at this as an opportunity," Crystal suggested. "You will be able to be outside, you can meet people who have been in a similar situation, you will be able to finish high school in an actual classroom setting!" Her opinions on the way the school was run aside, it did have teachers, students, and classes.

The girl sank into a chair. Part of her fluttered in excitement, part of her wallowed in a broken heart. "I suppose I should pack, then."